Hi,

I read a lot of messages in this forum and realized that activating the DMA on the IDE is a common solution when we're talking of performance issues. I personnally experiency choppy video with Myth TV. The first thing I checked was the DMA setting, and it is, obviously DISABLED. I try to enable it with the hdparm utility but when I try it, it give me an error like:

/dev/hda:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
using_dma = 0 (off)

The other options (32 bit and multicount to 16) works but it only improve the performance from 226/2.xx Mb/s to 450/4.xx Mb/s.. WAY TOO SLOW!

The linux world is new for me. I made some searches on google to find out what can be the cause of this problem.. would it be possible that I have to recompile the Kernel to support my Motherboard chipset?

Can anyone help me out with this problem?

My motherboard is: Asus P4R800-VM

thank you!

What switches are you using? Are you trying to set this as root?

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

the exact command I'm trying to execute is:

hdparm -d1 /dev/hda

And i'm logged as root. I don't think it's a permission issue. (I succeed to change other switches. For example, this command works: hdparm -X66 -m16 -c3 /dev/hda )

thanks if anyone can help me
I'll keep you inform if I found something!

check your Bios setting that DMA is enabled.

In the bios, it is set to AUTO. I guess it is the correct setting?

I read something about the support of ATI IXP IDE on linux. Can it be related to my problem ?

http://mirror.hamakor.org.il/archives/l ... /8991.html

If it's my problem, is it possible to run KnoppMyth on kernel 2.6.3 ??
I'm currently using Kernel 2.4.21 (installed from the knoppmyth cd)

if you are using a motherboard with that chipset it could well be your problem. Knoppmyth will run with the newer kernel. you will just have to download the source and build it yourself. then you will have to make sure you build the lirc stuff also, and rebuild any other special kernel modules you may have.

so short answer yes you can run kernel 2.6.x but not easily.

You may want to consider adding an off-board IDE Controller as suggested here :

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5320#5320

Thanks for the advice, but I finally fixed my problem with a kernel 2.6.3 installation and a ATI IXP patch.

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ ... tiixp_ide/

DMA is now enabled. I get better performance result now with hdparm (40 mb/s instead of 4 mb/s). Now, I must solve the new problems I got with this new kernel